Corruption Bleeds From Every Depth of the BCS
Four long months have gone by since everyone has heard from The Gun Show, and in that time, I’d say I’ve been graced by a few sports epiphanies. Luckily (I can only hope), you’re in for another year of college sports news decoding. Whether this saddens you or gives you comfort, there’s one thing I can say (as Peter Griffin once made clear), there are a few things that really grind my gears…
Nothing beats a great in-conference college football matchup, right? Fans of all walks of life just cannot wait to sit down with their popcorn in hand to watch their ranked team beat a lower-echelon no name… well if that’s what you’re thinking (and agreeing upon), then you’ve lost any sense of dignity regarding sports and its true motivating factor: Fun. Stemming from that: Friendly competition. It is all gone.
Three quarters of the games we see now are fifty point blowouts that don’t even deserve a minute of viewership.
This is not the powerful team’s fault either. Every now and then you may hear about a coach catching some scrutiny for purposely running up the score in an effort to cure some sort of personal vendetta with the opposite sideline. Yes, this is an exception. But in general, it’s the format of the NCAA football system that allows for such lopsidedness.
Highly paid college scouts for Big Ten or SEC programs bring in unparalleled talent through recruitment and the coaching staffs, which earn millions to mold these players into Heisman contenders and All-Americans. Succeeding that, these NFL ready rosters take on the lower caliber NCAA teams; these rosters are full of staffs which earn half as much and have a quarter of the talent. Put the two together, add in some television cameras and you get boring, predictable and unruly games. The Alabamas, LSUs and Oregons of the world will pummel their opponents, sometimes 60-0 or maybe even worse.
Where’s the fun in that? If you can grin and bear it enough to watch the game, you may just get to see it long enough to hate the system. Because of the way the BCS makes the “postseason,” teams need to acquire as many points as they can to distance themselves in the standings. The teams they’ve beaten, how badly they did so and their strengths of schedule will potentially earn them a spot in the one of many bowl games. But the victims on the other end, they just get demoralized.
Just look at this week for example, Florida State beat Wake Forest 52-0. Oregon beat Tennessee Tech 63-14. Michigan beat UMass 63-13. Alabama beat Arkansas 52-0. LSU beat Idaho 63-14… And the list continues.
What sort of fan wants to see such a slaughter? What type of NCAA representative wants a business model based off of demoralization and one-sided favoritism?
Well here’s Dan Gunderman’s solution… We’ve already seen conference realignment in the past year to adjust the talent and play in a few major conferences. Well why not just go through with the plans to create a bracket-like post season where all that really matters in the end, is wins and losses. In a system where point totals are gone and blowouts wouldn’t matter so much anymore, every side wins.
Teams who would normally inflict the pain on other programs, will get to ease back in the second or third quarter and get an opportunity to play everyone on their roster. All these guys go through the rigor of training, traveling and suiting up but never get the opportunity to play. In a bracketed postseason, once a win is eminent, more players get action and can eventually tell their children they played in an NCAA Division I football game.
On the other side of the aisle, the teams who would normally be beaten to a pulp with no remorse would see these score differentials diminish a bit. They would look closer on paper, and also get a chance to “hang with the big guns.” If they think rationally, they will get their share of quality play against other evenly matched teams, but when it comes to playing an Alabama or Oregon, life would just be down-right better when points don’t help determine a team’s plight.
After the eleven game regular season, teams would then enter a tournament, like NCAA Basket-ball, and go through a playoff to determine a winner. This is normally the way we go about sports anyway isn’t it? Being fair and just? Well no, currently the BCS exhibits a corrupted, embarrassing system where some of these teams who will constantly beat down on others won’t even get their shot at the championship…Instead, they’ll play for titles like the Tostito’s Awesome-New-Scoop-Chip Bowl or the Midas I-Just-Changed-My-Oil Bowl Game. It’s an unfair process, bottom line.
This is no longer like Tammany Hall politics or nominating a political candidate in a back room. It is 2012 and being rational just happens to be valued by most. If we just transform the current BCS “regime” into a respectable, thorough bracket system, we’d see teams play for an honest shot in a championship and scores lower in less-impactful games. Morale wise, we’d also have a boost of confidence all around, from the highly paid scouts and coaches to the underpaid, under-recognized coaches who act as both at lower tier schools.
So please let’s just end the 60-3 victories. No one’s happy with this, unless you’re one of two teams selected from the ‘herd’ at the end of the year.
